Bellow, Cady seemed to be experiencing pain, and there was nearly human shock and rage in his voice, as if he was furious that his plan had been interrupted.
I guess that makes us even, you asshole!
Michael kept firing, torturing the monster-boy.
Hank had kept his head together just amazingly well: he’d ducked down to the ground to avoid the bullets the moment Cady was off of him, hadn’t even flinched when some of Cady’s viscera splashed on him. “Hank! C’mon!” Michael shouted behind the rifle.
Hank stayed perfectly still.
“Hank, over here, now!” Holly cried, moving toward Michael and Patrick. Michael had the monster seized in the bullets now, but what about when the clip ran dry? And Jopek was only maybe ten feet from Michael, and maybe he’d attack, too, and—
— and Hank didn’t move.
Blood trickled from the back of his skull and spread into the lanes between the marble tiles.
“No. Oh, Christ, no,” Holly breathed.
The gun stopped quiet in Michael’s hands.
Hank had been dead since his head had struck the wall.
Cady Gibson stared, smiled, smiled, and he looked like a boy who had wandered across an executioners’ firing line and thought it sort of tickled. Michael’s eyes locked with his—its—dark sockets, and chills flew through him like black wings. Because, beyond the nine-year-old eyes, he saw some poisonous truth flash:
This Thing was newborn . . . and it was very, very old.
Cady Gibson shrieked one final blast, and this time the windows blew out, like glass curtains. The monster leapt out the window and vanished into the white void of the storm. And as the boy’s shrieking faded off across the night that had promised Michael freedom and future, Michael could not help but think that the sound seemed to become laughter—yes, laughter, at him. . . .
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Patrick, Michael thought. You have to tell Patrick it’s okay. That you’re not scared of what just happened. You . . . you have to breathe, Michael. Breathe. Rule one, breathe.
Now, look down, champ. Look down, and see Patrick disappear into himself. Look down, and see your brother Freaking. Because you were too late. Because you forgot the Atipax. Because Game freaking OVER—
Michael looked down.
His brother was watching him. But Patrick was not terrified. The cry of the impossible monster still rang, but Patrick was not the panting and quivering kid he had been in the pharmacy. Bub was, sort of, smiling. As if he was just slightly bewildered that a boy had somehow clung to the wall and gotten one of the Gamers.
How the hell is Patrick okay? Michael wondered distantly.
Patrick said, “You just shot the Betrayer, right?” And that was the moment Michael saw the numbed desperation in Patrick’s strange expression. “Hank got hurt but we’re okay because we play right, right?”
He knows that Hank got hurt. Maybe even dead—if Bub even totally understands what that means. But The Game still makes sense to him. For now, it still does, because he thinks Hank just didn’t follow the Instructions. Even with Patrick’s limited understanding of the world and his need to believe in The Game, Michael didn’t think that this deception would last long. And even though Michael knew that he’d had to build The Game’s illusions for Patrick’s safety, he still suddenly felt the dreadful power of his own deception. He feels better when someone is “logically” dead than when someone is just “cheating.”
Oh God, Patrick, what the hell kind of world have I made for you?
Patrick repeated, this time a little shriller with need: “You got the Betrayer, right?”
Which was when Michael remembered that Jopek was still nearby. He whirled toward Jopek, raising the rifle to his shoulder. The world puckered at the edges of his vision; a bitter yellow heat spiked up his throat. Oh, I think I’m in shock, he realized with dim interest. I think I’m going to puke.
Somewhere behind him, Holly sucked a gasp, like she’d forgotten to breathe, too.
Jopek wasn’t running at him like he had feared. He was kneeling at Hank’s body—Hank’s corpse, whispered Michael’s mind, and his stomach rolled. Jopek’s expression was a battle surgeon’s look, a face of compartmentalized concern that was, somehow, everything in the world grown-up and strong. It said, Trust me; you said, Always.
With his face angled toward the fallen Hank, Jopek raised his blistering eyes. Shoulda listened, Mikey, they said, hideously triumphant. Oh yes, you shoulda let ol’ Jopek stay in charge.
Not going to puke! thought Michael fiercely. Not in front of you.
“No-no-no-no-no,” Holly whispered. She stood